Facing crunch, town plots to buy back cemetery space

Friday

Jun 22, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 22, 2007 at 10:17 PM

A check for $600 may seem like chump change to someone who just shelled out $2,000 for a cemetery plot — the current rate at Mount Pleasant — but if your great grandmother bought a plot years ago at the bargain rate of $50, it could be a good deal.

By Noah R. Bombard

The Cemetery Commission’s latest attempt to find a solution to the town’s rapidly diminishing cemetery space could line a few folk’s pockets.

From July 1 to Oct. 1, the commission is offering to buyback unused cemetery plots for $600 a plot. The plan is an attempt to provide additional burying spaces at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which commissioners anticipate will be full in five to seven years. Once that happens, residents who want to be buried in Arlington could be out of luck, unless the town finds more room or a resident owns a plot at St. Paul’s Cemetery, owned by Archdiocese of Boston.

There are a few catches to selling a plot back to Mount Pleasant: For one, the plot has to be useable.

“It has to be seen if it’s something we can use,” Cemetery Commissioner Michele Hassler said. “If we can use it and we can buy it back we definitely would.”

Some older plots, due to tree growth or ground shifting, may not be able to be used anymore. Hassler said the process won’t be as simple as just signing off on the deed to the plot. The commission will have to investigate the plot to see if there are any others who have claim to it and that it is indeed a plot that could be used.

A check for $600 may seem like chump change to someone who just shelled out $2,000 for a cemetery plot — the current rate at Mount Pleasant — but if your great grandmother bought a plot years ago at the bargain rate of $50, it could be a good deal.

“My family paid maybe $200 and that was in the ‘60s,” Hassler said. “$600 is better than $50 or nothing.”

Why would someone sell a plot back to the town? Hassler said many times folks buy plots with many graves in anticipation of their families growing. That, she said, doesn’t always happen and graves lie empty.

“We just had a woman come to us last week and her great aunt bought a plot for six people and she’s the only one in it,” Hassler said. “The family did not grow as perhaps she anticipated.”

Hassler said the woman is seeking to keep just the space above her aunt’s grave and to sell the rest of the plot back to the town.

With space getting tight, Hassler said the commission is trying to find creative ways to keep the cemetery open to new burials longer. Already most of Arlington’s dead are doubled up. Graves are stacked by two — one on top of another — in the ground, a practice that has been followed for most of the last century.

There are currently about 400 available graves left at Mount Pleasant. There are only 12 spots left in the cemetery’s veteran’s section.

“We’re in the process of trying to find little nooks and crannies that we haven’t used,” Hassler said.

But the commission doesn’t have to buyback all the unused plots. By law, they could just take some of them. Plots that were sold more than 75 years ago can, according to Massachusetts law, can be reclaimed by a cemetery if, after a diligent search, they can’t find an owner.

“A town is mandated to provide a space for its residents to be buried in. Even though the deed says you can take over spots, we simply don’t feel right about doing that,” Hassler said. “We’re trying to encourage people to come out of the woodwork.”Town